


Eternity

by gabsrambles



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Vamp!Laura, a one shot that I´m planning on adding more random oneshots to
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-05-20 19:32:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6022186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabsrambles/pseuds/gabsrambles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carmilla waits, as she always has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written before season two was released, so the plot doesn´t follow the return of the Dean. I did, however, edit to slip in a small Mattie mention....just ´cause.

If asked about eternity, Carmilla would have one thing to say.

It´s really not what it´s cracked up to be.

For one, you always outlive the people you know. Always.

She´d attended her father´s funeral. Of course, Mother had not known where she was going. Quietly, as if she could have secrets from her maker, she stole away to be in the background, and watched them lower the coffin into the earth. The wood had gleamed under the harsh sun and the sound of a sob, surely her mother´s, had reached her. It had only been fifteen years since Carmilla had disappeared, yet the memories of her parents were faded, an old painting left in the sun. When she slept, somewhere cool and dark, always near Mother, often curled up with Mattie, she dreamed of them at times. An echo of a laugh, a feather light touch against her hair, a gruff voice, low and gravelly and warm. But when she woke, the dreams faded as rapidly as sand falling through her fingers and she could never recall more than a whisper.

Dirt was piled on top of her father, the thudding sound almost in time with Carmilla´s sluggish heart, and she barely felt a thing. There was a detached tearing in her chest, but she couldn´t connect it with the sight in front of her.

What hurt more than her father´s death was the inability to feel anything about it.

Despite that, she forced herself to attend her mother´s burial a year later, to stand vigil as if her presence meant anything to anyone.

Later, in the safety of dark hours, she had sat, the night wide and the stars spread over her head like a canopy, cross legged and staring at a stone that was nothing more than a reminder.

For far too long, she´d believed herself beyond attachment to humans. How could she feel it when she couldn´t feel anything for her own parents? Humans were flesh and blood, a meal, some fun. Their heartbeats danced a delicious rhythm beneath their skin, begging to be bitten. Their skin was unnaturally soft and a joy to run her fingers over. There were times, at dances, Carmilla would lose herself talking to one-an animated girl, usually. Inevitably. Light in her eyes and life flushing her cheeks, Carmilla would find herself enraptured. A fancy of hers, she thought. An entertainment before a meal. Mother indulged it, because it assisted with her needs. Loath to admit it, Carmilla didn´t hate helping her mother collect her victims, because it allowed her time away from her vampire brethren and near the humans that always tugged at her. They were more interesting that she would ever admit, this kind that existed to feed her own. But that was all.

Nothing more.

There was no attachment.

But then Ell.

And a harsh lesson of the un-dead.

And then years and years of darkness and suffocation.

Carmilla may not need to breathe, but that didn´t mean she didnt´t like to.

She´d lain beneath the earth, the heat pressing down on her, weak and waiting for Mother to see sense. There had never been a doubt in her mind that Mother would return for her-the doubt was in the when of it.

Finally, the earth had ripped in two and Carmilla had emerged from a battlefield to sights and sounds she was lost in.

Times had changed-the world had changed.

Mother had not.

The game had not.

Twisted under Mother´s thumb, Carmilla played as she always had, and bent the rules where she could. The sparkle was gone-parties were loud and irritated her. The girls just made her think of Ell, and remorse cut in her stomach.

For each girl she didn´t manage to tear from Mother´s clutches, Carmilla followed a ritual.

Sentimentality meant their families would eventually set up a memorial, and, years later, on an anniversary, she would sit on the grass in front of it. Legs crossed, she´d stare at the stone until it was imprinted beneath her eyelids. Slowly, she´d lay back, hands under her head, and stare at the sky, stars and clouds unable to wash the words away and she´d murmur them aloud: a beginning date, an end date and a name. A penance-a price. She didn´t dare think the words ´a prayer´. It was all she had to offer them.

As night faded away, so did she, back to the world she couldn´t escape.

Of course, she had not had to do that in years. Not since she´d hit Mother with a sword hilt and sent her spiraling down.

Yet here Carmilla was, again.

The circumstances different, but sitting on damp earth nonetheless, the stone in front of her almost luminescent in the heavy night.

This time was worse.

This time was pain.

There was no relaxed lie down under the stars to ponder the universe and her place in it. To ponder the games Mother played. 

Mother was long dead.

No, Carmilla sat straight-backed and unblinking, staring at the rounded earth in front of her.

The coffin had been small, because Laura had been small.

Laura had asked her-had begged her, for eternity. For forever-together.

And Carmilla had said no.

The funeral was a torrid affair. Carmilla had watched from afar, a sad mirror of her father´s. When the last mourners had left, whispering about her not being there, Carmilla had sat to do what she did best. To watch and twist guilt around her fingers like a glove.

Carmilla had said no.

Regardless of her wants, she had faced the idea of eternity alone, without Laura. She had settled for maybe sixty years with her-more, if medicine kept up. 

Because eternity was not all it was cracked up to be.

This was always going to happen.

Becoming a vampire changed you. It changed something essential. You weren´t you, just with a sensitivity to sunlight and a craving for red blood cells. Something altered, something shifted. Carmilla was not who she was when she had been born human. The was a darkness, a shadow. A difference. And Carmilla had never wanted to do that to Laura. Not to her. Not to Laura, who was pure light and energy in the form of flesh-warm, soft flesh-Laura who sometimes, at night, curled herself so tightly around Carmilla she didn´t know where Laura began and she ended. Who´s skin flushed in passion, who´s heart raced under Carmilla´s cheek. Who´s breathing was the song Carmilla fell asleep to each night.

As Laura had aged, small numbers of years slipping buy, she´d pushed for it. But there had been no way Carmilla could take that light out of Laura´s eye and watch the coldness settle in. She loved Laura-too much to do that.

Carmilla had said no.

Ten years had passed and Carmilla had accepted the fact that the repercussions meant Laura would die, and she´d be alone.

Agony, but necessary.

Crickets chirped as if the world had not stopped. A car drove past in the distance. Wind picked up and played over Carmilla´s arms, already cool to touch, no goosebumps left behind. Her skin was as luminescent as the headstone in front of her.

And, finally, before her eyes, the earth shifted.

Fingers emerged, brown with dirt, and Carmilla swallowed and held a breath she didn´t need.

Carmilla had said no, but Laura had never taken no for an answer.


	2. Burning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shift in POV.

There´s dirt and sand and suffocation that she realises quickly isn´t suffocation. There´s something dry in her throat and it burns and for some reason, she tries to breath in but it feels like a vacuum, like its wrong, like its not something she should do.

That dirt fills her mouth but she doesn´t feel as if she can´t breathe, there´s no burning in her lungs. Instinct is itching at the back of her mind, clawing at it, and her hands respond, clawing upwards, outwards, until cool air hits her skin and face and there´s grass under her nails, not just dirt as her knees sink in deep to soft Earth.

Everything is blurred, shifting, out of reach. Coughing, retching, spitting, she spits out sand and mud and pieces of the planet until she can suck in lungfuls of oxygen that don´t change the feeling tearing at her insides.

It still feels wrong, like it´s pulling outwards, not inwards, and she stops doing it.

She´s bombarded with sensations, with the sound of traffic so far away but as if it´s next to her. Somehow, she knows it´s not right there, but the sound of tyres crunching over gravel are loud in her ears. There´s the sound of the wind, but under it, easy to pick out, is the sound of leaves _rubbing_ together. She can hear the sluggish pump of her heart in her chest, the way her blood moves glacially throughout her body. The smell of damp ground, of her own skin, of the grass, the trees, a distant smell of grease and oil. She can feel the wind playing over the hairs on her arms, the weight of gravity is heavy in her bones.

And her throat _burns_ and not for air.

It burns.

She wants. She wants something.

There is something she wants, something sweet and salty, all together, something that tastes like life.

A question whispers in the back of it all.

_Who am I?_

It´s all a cacophony. A roar of sensation, and slowly, overpoweringly, her _want_ for something.

Not a want.

A need.

There´s a sound in her ear, a new one, and a rumble in her throat that makes it ache with that burning.

She just growled.

With the need of it.

The cacophony and that need is making her skin itch and her fingers dig harder into the ground as she kneels in the dirt. Confusion starts to pound at her chest.

Then, a smell, soft, subtle, _there_ stumbles across her consciousness. One she knows, one she recognises.

One that makes sense.

One that is _hers_.

That rumble grates her throat again, the deepest part of her and ignoring the scratching at her eyes as she opens them, she raises her head.

A woman stares at her, with wide eyes, cross-legged and pale and posture soft.

 _Hers_.

There´s something in the one-that´s-hers hand as she holds it out and a smell slams into her so hard she almost drops with it. There´s a twist in her stomach, a yearning, a need and the fire in her throat rages to a furnace. Without realising she´s moved, she´s there, in front of _hers_ , in front of the one whose name is prickling at her, is edging on her lips more than her own, because _who am I_. But then the bag of red is torn open by her teeth and the liquid is pouring down her throat, settling in her belly and it tastes like heaven, like sated thirst and some of the fog that had settled so heavy lifts.

"Laura..."

That name makes her blink, the last gulp nestled in her stomach. The voice is low, it wavers.

That´s who she is. Laura, she knows that name, the rightness of it settles over her. Laura´s tongue traces her lip, tastes the red, the blood, she realises. Blood. Her stomach wrenches again. She wants more. Her eyes rise up to meet the dark ones staring at her, intent and brimming with an emotion that Laura can´t recognise, can´t pick apart through the strangling fog.

It comes easy, then.

"Carmilla?"


	3. Chapter 3

The first time Laura had asked, Carmilla had thought she was joking. They´d been wrapped around each other, sweat cooling on their skin as night washed through the window. Rhythmically, her hands had moved through Laura´s hair, the strands falling between her fingers like silk.

She´d smelt like Laura, like Carmilla, like _them._ In spite of herself, Carmilla always felt something settle low in her belly in these moments, felt it stretch over her bones to nestle into the deepest parts of her: Laura was _hers_.

Once, Carmilla had told her she knew Laura didn´t want any possessive vampire crap.

But that didn´t mean Carmilla didn´t feel it. It was in her nature, and somehow, Laura had become everything.

The words Laura had spoken next had tickled over Carmilla´s chest. So close, Laura may as well have spoken them into Carmilla´s heart, into the chambers and amongst the valves to pump the words so slowly through her body, oiled along her arteries and insides to never be forgotten.

“Make me like you.”

Sleep had been pressing itself into Carmilla´s eyes, dancing along her edges and she blinked, slowly, her lashes heavy against her cheek.

“Hm?”

And then cool air had started swirling around her, washing over her skin and Laura was half sitting up, elbow digging into the mattress. With her head in her hand, she´d gazed down at Carmilla with eyes that were far too awake.

Camilla loved those yes. Like warm whisky.

“Make me like you.”

Later, Carmilla would kick herself for not getting it. For not clicking with what she was asking. They were long past the days in which Carmilla felt Laura didn´t understand her nature. A year past, at that point. They´d moved through life, Laura finishing her second year of college, in sync and together. So different, at times, but each other’s; that was all that had mattered to them, really.

“What are you asking, Cupcake?”

Teeth had been worrying Laura´s lip, the moonlight falling over her face in a way that made her look surreal.

“I want forever with you.”

And it had clicked, then, what Laura was asking. What she wanted Carmilla to do. And Carmilla had felt her lethargic heart pause, freeze in her chest.

“What?”

“Make me a vampire.”

Laura´s eyes had lit up with something. There´d been something there Carmilla recognised: her light for an idea, a plan. The stubbornness that always took her over and left Carmilla following in her wake. No matter how slowly, her feet always followed Laura´s, the plan she was marching out on one Carmilla loathed. But if Laura was there, so was Carmilla.

“No.”

“Carmilla—“

“No.”

That light had not dimmed, even as Laura´s eyes had narrowed. “Carm…”

In that exact moment, Carmilla had wanted to rewind them ten minutes. To roll them over, ignore the satiated lethargy that made her limbs heavy and bury her face into Laura´s neck, to trace her lips across her clavicle and down and down until Laura came undone too many times to think on this idea and, instead, fell asleep, sweaty and panting and wrapped around Carmilla.

But she knew her girlfriend. That would not have made any difference.

That had not been a spontaneous idea.

“No, Laura.”

Carmilla didn´t often tell Laura no. Something in her had a weakness for the girl above her. But that had been a no. Her cheeks had been flushed, Carmilla could see it even in the dull light, flushed and warm. Her pulse had beat at her neck and the sound of her heart had beat steady, a little too quickly in her chest, a pattern Carmilla knew and listened for. The sound of her breathing was a tattoo that spread inside Carmilla´s brain each night, a song to fall asleep to.

Laura´d had no idea what she was asking.

On her elbows then, too, Carmilla had stared Laura straight in the eye.

“Why not?”

“You really don´t know why not?”

Carmilla´s voice cracked a little and she had hated that. Something in Laura´s gaze had faltered then. She´d blinked, her tongue tracing over her lip and Carmilla wondered if it still tasted like her.

“I—please?”

Carmilla had narrowed her eyes and given one shake of her head. “No.”

She´d got up then, not bothering to find clothes, and gone to the couch.

Laura hadn´t followed.

For hours, Carmilla had lain awake and stared at the ceiling. She´d tried not to think of this. Of their relationship and what it meant, and the inevitable failure of it that would hurtle towards them all too fast. Someone undead, someone who could live forever, with a human? It was a thing of stories, of irony and a twisted fate that made her sneer and it left an ache in her chest that throbbed, at times, with the knowledge that, one day, Laura was going to leave her behind.

But nothing throbbed more than the idea of dragging Laura back to stay with her.

Carmilla was anything but selfless. She´d ravaged her way through a century not caring about anything but herself, and maybe Mattie. Everything she had done had been for pleasure, for her own gain.

And so was this, really. She couldn’t drag Laura back, to hold her to the Earth when she was destined to leave it.

But not just that.

Carmilla couldn´t stand to see the light leave her. To see the shadow that would sit behind her eye. To risk losing what made Laura, _Laura_. To lose the music of her pulse, the gushing sound of her blood moving through her body, brushing against vessels and keeping her alive.

Carmilla would never risk all of that. She was, entirely, too selfish.

But then, countless times of Laura asking Carmilla later, Carmilla was staring at the one thing she´d never wanted to do.

In front of the one thing that was entirely proof of her selfishness.

Laura, newly risen, streaked with dirty after the struggle from the grave.

Carmilla watched Laura stand, something graceful to her movements; something not there, before, in the way she´d stumbled and bumbled around. Accident prone. That was what she´d been. It had been a headache, for Carmilla. But endearing: completely Laura in its nature.

That part was gone.

Carmilla´s chest ached, now, as it had many times: a painful, pulsing agony.

What else would be gone?

What else had cleaved itself from Laura´s body, from her mind, from her soul?

How much, exactly, had Carmilla broken the one thing she ever really wanted to keep whole?

Matching her movement, Carmilla stood with her, their eyes locked.

Laura had hated the laugh lines that had appeared around her eyes the last few months. Had hated the testimony to age. She´d only just had her twenty-fifth birthday, but had seemed to feel like it was all a testimony to how much older she was than Carmilla. All Carmilla had been able to do at that was smirk. She had hundreds of years on Laura. But Laura didn´t seem to understand how much Carmilla had loved the way life was marking Laura.

She had wanted to see how it would continue to mark her. Greedily, Carmilla had wanted to stay for it, when, in reality, she should have walked away in the beginning. How had she not seen that this was where it would always go? That when Laura had asked it, that first time, this was inescapable?

The Laura in front of her was too still. Nothing moved, except her hair in the breeze.

Hardness had settled a little along the line of Laura´s jaw.

She smelt like the Earth, like the blood that stained her lips.

That aching in Carmilla´s chest persisted. Blood did not belong on Laura´s lips. A tongue followed the line of them, licking at the red still there and Carmilla clenched her jaw.

“I´m thirsty.”

She´d drunk a litre. The first hours of Carmilla´s vampire life were a hazy memory, one not easily accessed. There had been no blood bags, then. There was a vague idea of her fangs piercing something soft, of hot, tangy relief running down her throat.

A scream in her ear that tailed off.

Not for Laura.

Maybe, Carmilla could save Laura from becoming a monster.

She held out the second bag, one she never thought she´d need and watched as Laura tore into it again, teeth glinting in the light from the moon. Her hands snatched the bag so quickly. A blink. Vampiric in its speed.

When the bag fell away, hanging from Laura´s hand listlessly, it was half full and they stared at each other, several feet still separating them. That breeze played between them and there was something huge in Carmilla´s throat, something blocking it and prickling and something damp in her eye.

The hardest thing she had ever done has resulted in the vampire standing in front of her.

“Carmilla?” Her voice was the same and it made Carmilla close her eyes, hope too much to fall in to. “Carm?”

Carmilla opened her eyes and the half-filled bag was held between them, Laura´s eyes intent on her own.

There´d been a moment, when she´d crawled out of the dirt, that Carmilla had panicked. Her heart had fluttered, something that was difficult for it to do, and Laura had looked crazed, lost. When she´d looked at Carmilla, she hadn´t known who she was.

Then recognition had flashed in her eyes and relief had flooded every cell of Carmilla´s body.

And now Laura was looking at her like everything was how it was supposed to be.

“Carm? Do you want some?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know if you´re enjoying the slow foray into camp!Laura :) . I´ve started to get a few ideas of some one shots to take this little ´verse forward....

**Author's Note:**

> _I tumble[here](http://gabs-88.tumblr.com/), feel free to stop by and ramble at me, ask questions, say hi or whatever._


End file.
